“Let us take an illustration. If the American Indians, who formerly lived a hunter’s life on the present area of the United States, had been questioned before the discovery of America about the density of population of their country, they would, no doubt, have said that their country was more densely populated at that time than it had ever been before, and that it would be utterly impossible for the land area comprising the present limits of the United States to support a population of over sixty millions of people who eat and waste so much, who wear so many good clothes, and who live in such good wigwams as the people of the United States actually do at the present time. Those Indians would undoubtedly have further argued that they had better weapons and tools, better wigwams, better clothes and better food than any of their ancestors had enjoyed, and that therefore the earth would be unable to do much better than it is already doing. But you, the white man, actually showed the Indians differently, when you settled among them. You changed the system of making a livelihood, to something of which the Indians had never thought; and very likely if one could have propounded a system similar to your present one, he would have been branded a traitor to his country, and a heretic to his religion. Instead of leading a hunter’s life, which requires a large territory and a sparse population, you partially live on agricultural products, and partially on _domestic_, instead of wild, animals. The Indian lived almost exclusively on a flesh diet--game, while you cultivate the soil and raised stock. Your industrial system is able to support a population vastly more dense than the Indian’s system was capable of supporting. So you see, the error was not that the earth is unable to sustain a denser population than the Indian’s, but that the Indian was not living under _that_ social and industrial system which _is_ capable of sustaining a dense population. The Indians’ mistake was, that they measured the possible maximum density of population by the standard of _their_ social and industrial system. They knew that thousands of their companions were in want, and that they were frequently pressing on subsistence in all directions. “Just so it is with you at the present time. You are apparently always figuring on what can be done under your present system. You, by adopting a social and industrial system which is capable of sustaining a denser population, showed the Indians that they had not reached the maximum density of population. Now I want to show you that you are as mistaken on your present density of population as the Indians were on theirs.